David Bollier, Privatizing the Weather, On the Commons, May 4, 2005. Excerpt: 'AccuWeather...accuses the government of undercutting its business, and has now prevailed upon Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania to introduce legislation (S. 786) that would require the National Weather Service to suppress a lot of its data and retreat to the pre-Internet era....More to the point, who's duplicating whom? AccuWeather relies upon the Weather Service's free data, then charges 15,000 customers for its proprietary work-ups. For AccuWeather/Santorum to demand that the Weather Service shut off public access to its data is essentially asking that AccuWeather be given a lucrative monopoly and have the public pay for it. Should libraries be shut down because they "compete" with bookstores? Should the national parks be eliminated because they offer an alternative to Kampgrounds of America? The Santorum bill is really about rank protectionism – for a cry-baby business and a vulnerable political ideology. AccuWeather wants a subsidized, competition-free business, and Republican ideologues want to stamp out a "bad example" of government meeting public needs more efficiently than private businesses. Making weather data (or court opinions or SEC filings) available as an open-access public good actually stimulates more business activity than awarding it to a fat-and-happy monopolist. An open-source data platform is more likely to stimulate innovation than a closed, proprietary one.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/05/2005 12:48:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
